I write about style, art, culture, watches and high-end cars as a staff writer for Forbes. Whether I'm talking with Bernard Arnault, Jeff Koons or Ralph Lauren, my goal is to explore life from the inside, to figure out what success means to those who believe they have attained it--or are well on their way. Write to me at helliott@forbes.com. You can also follow me on Twitter (@HannahElliott), Instagram (@HannahElliottxo), Facebook and Google+.

How To Understand The French: Learn The Power Of Seduction, Know Why Topless Bathing Is Over

Elaine Sciolino knows a thing or two about France. The former New York Times Paris Bureau Chief has lived there since 2002; last year she became a chevalier of the Legion of Honor for her “special contribution” to the friendship between France and the United States.

Currently a Paris correspondent for the Times, she also just wrote a book about the one thing that explains virtually all of French culture: Seduction.

In La Seduction: How The French Play The Game of Life, Sciolino posits that the key to understanding the French–in everything from politics and pomp to fragrance, food, fashion and flirting–is understanding how and why they wield the power of seduction.

For the French, seduction isn’t always about sex. It can be, of course, but it more generally connotes an affectation of charm, persuasion, allure and even wartime strategy (an opération séduction is the near equivalent of what Americans call a charm offensive). It’s the ability to maintain a repartee that tantalizes both parties involved.

“Seduction is conversation,” Sciolino says. “It could be a conversation of smell, a conversation of looking. It could be a conversation of speech; it could be a conversation between two diplomats. It is basically making contact with the other person and talking about or sharing what you have in common. Deciding what you have in common and then developing it.

“That’s seduction. It seems so simple. But that’s what it is.”

I spoke with Sciolino recently about how French women flirt even in their 60s, why Carla Bruni is like a 19th-century courtesan, and why topless bathing in France is over. We also spoke about how Dominique Strauss Kahn is viewed in France in light of his recent Sofitel scandal.

We spoke on the day of Sciolino’s 26th wedding annivesary–an auspicious day to talk about seducing someone. (She met her husband on the Long Island Railroad; they were both headed to the Hamptons. “I’m a big believer in public transportation,” she says with a laugh.)

Here’s part of our conversation:

Hannah Elliott: I was surprised to hear you say it was more difficult to write this book than it was to write your book on Iran. Why was that?

ES: Well, it surprised me too. But I think it was because I owned Iran. There were very few Americans who had spent as much time as I had in Iran. I had extraordinary access in Iran and had traveled all over the country over years and years, and so it was very easy to discover what was not well-known.

But France is well-trodden territory; there are no virginal landscapes. I faced what I called my Hemingway complex: I was neither Hemingway nor was I married to a Frenchman nor did I have a country house where I could talk about the encounter with the contractor and the plumber and the farmer down the road. So it took a lot more work to make it creative and to make it mine.

It was harder to avoid cliché because so much has been written about France.

HE: Does your book apply to Americans? Can someone who is reading it aspire to become more seductive even if they’re not French?

ES: Yes and no. If you asked my husband how he perceives that I have changed since I started researching this book, he would say that I have more of a sense of humor and that I am more playful. I hate to use that adjective, but here I am former chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, ex war correspondent, ex CIA correspondent—I’m a no-nonsense serious correspondent—and I had to learn how to talk to people in a different way in order to have much more of an endless dialogue, which is really what I say seduction is.

I mean, all seduction really is is a conversation without end. If the conversation ends, then the seduction is over. If the conversation continues, then the excitement continues whether it’s intellectual excitement or sexual excitement or excitement over what kind of lamb chops to buy tonight with your butcher.

HE: It’s a skill, isn’t it?

ES: Some people have asked why I liked Carla Bruni when I traveled with her, and the real reason I did like her is she picked up what I was talking about and talked about those subjects.

And it was only afterward that I realized how incredibly astute and, one could say, manipulative it was in a way. The conversation was not all about her. It was her ability to talk about any subject the way a 19th century courtesan could.

HE: How does that skill come into play with new constructs like Twitter and Facebook? In the book you quote Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian saying, “To live happy, live hidden.” Twitter is not a very hidden medium….

ES: Look, the French use social media. They blog, they use Twitter, they use Facebook. But they don’t do it to the same extent that Americans do, and it is transforming this whole compartmentalization of the vie privée, the private life. Anecdotes and events that in prior days would have been private or would have been written about but not filmed are now out there on YouTube.

If there had just been rumors about Dominique Strauss Kahn’s behavior in New York, or if he hadn’t been arrested, there might not have been any repercussions.

HE: The same applies perhaps for John Galliano. The fact that he was recorded in video made a big difference in the case against him.

ES: It was a slam dunk. That’s a perfect example: He might have gotten away with it if it had been he said she said. I mean if there had been a video camera in the suite at the Sofitel, it would have been a different story.

HE: It was interesting to read your notes on the predilections of Dominique Strauss Kahn, which were published before his scandal.

ES: I was very careful in what I wrote about Dominique Strauss Kahn because in France our defamation laws are very strong. I played it right down the middle and I stuck to what was in the public domain and what was attributable.

When the event happened in New York, in terms of his behavior–his reported behavior and stories about him–I wasn’t surprised. But in terms of his political ambitions I was flabbergasted because he had just been back in Paris. He had told journalists he was prepared to announce his candidacy. He had acknowledged that he had three problems–women, money and his Jewishness–so you would have thought that somebody who wanted to become president would have been extra careful no matter what happened.

We’re never really going to know the truth of what happened but he was reckless and he was obviously exhibiting poor judgment.

HE: Is there a double standard between men and women in France in terms what is allowed to transpire when it comes to seduction?

ES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean men are allowed to get away with everything here.

HE: So if seduction is an ongoing conversation, what happens when you actually have sex? Is it all over? Can you seduce the same person twice?

ES: Well, yeah, if you don’t take your clothes off in front of them. Remember what [French singer and actress] Arielle Dombasle told me: Never walk nude in front of your lover.

HE: And she was serious about that?

ES: Yes! I’m telling you she was serious because I was there with one of my assistants from the office, a young woman in her mid 20s, and I turned to her and I said, is this really true? And she said, “Of course. You’re not going to want to show everything in the morning light like that. No.”

HE: In America that tends to come off as prudish.

ES: It all has to do with dressing and undressing and secrecy and hiding and revealing, and it’s why the French don’t think complete nudity is very sexy. In fact right now toplessness is out on French beaches.

It’s really funny–I was just walking on a beach with a Frenchwoman friend of mine and there was a nude part of the beach and we were looking at all of these naked bodies and it really was not very appealing. There was nothing secret, nothing to be unwrapped. I mean, clothes enhance the way you look.

HE: Yes, for most people….

ES: Yeah, for most people. There are very few people in the world who look absolutely perfect naked. Maybe when you’re like, two weeks old, you’re perfection. But after that it’s kind of….

HE: Downhill?

ES: Yeah. [laughs]

HE: You talk a lot in your book about allure. But you don’t really mention labels or specific articles of clothing. When it comes to dressing, is it more about an overall look than particulars?

ES: It’s really a look. But in a city like Paris there are codes. For example you’d never go out all dressed in everything brand new or everything labeled where you can identify the labels. If you have some really expensive Kelly green Chloé bag you’re not going to also wear red Prada shoes and an Yves Saint Laurent skirt and a Ventilo top, because you’ll look like you’re a series of price tags. You mix things.

I used to tell the women in my office, don’t give it away. Don’t show your cleavage, especially during work. You wouldn’t wear a really short skirt and show your cleavage. If you put heavy eye make-up on, don’t wear red lipstick. It’s a balancing act. It’s giving the impression that you’re not trying too hard even though you are trying very hard.

HE: There is a stereotype that French women are sexual and sexualized much later in age than American woman.

ES: I don’t think it’s a stereotype, I think it’s true.

HE: You agree?

ES: Oh absolutely! It’s so interesting to see older women flirt. It’s so natural. I still remember once when we first moved here my husband and I were sitting at a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon and there was this very lovely-dressed woman who had to be in her late 60s with a guy who was her age – it might have been her husband who knows – and she was dressed very elegantly with a jacket and all that. But she was just – the way her head moved and her shoulders moved, just the way she looked at him, the way she smiled. She just oozed sex appeal. And it wasn’t dégueulasse, it wasn’t vulgar, it was just there.

HE: Is that difference more about how the women perceive themselves or about how they’re treated by others?

ES: It’s both. It’s what I write in my book about le regard–the look. You never walk on the streets of Paris alone. (We’re talking much more about Paris than we are a small town in the countryside.) When you think about the café culture in Paris, the seats are usually facing out on the street, so you are a spectator. If you walk out by a café, you expect to be looked at by people sitting there. And if you’re in the café you’re expected to look at the objects passing before you.

HE: So you dress well. It goes back to the same mentality that you describe in the book—on ne sait jamais—the idea that you never know what might happen so you put your best foot forward, so to speak.

ES: That’s right. That’s right. You never know.

HE: You could meet some guy on a train and you’ll end up married to him.

ES: That’s right! That’s the sort of attitude. On ne sait jamais. You never know.

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French sensibilities are the reason we go to France for vacation…but live in the US. They don’t exist here and they don’t need to. Why the endless fascination?

And what on earth is wrong with prudishness anyway? I remember the first time I was called one by a handsome, wealthy college freshman from Williams. The insult gave me a strange kind of determination: to not measure myself by someone else’s expectations when it came to sex…or anything else, for that matter.

The entire discussion about French sensibilities suggests Americans (and particularly American women) aren’t doing something that we ought to–as if we don’t have the intelligence and maturity to determine that for ourselves.

Thanks for your comment. It’s certainly true that no one should feel pressure to measure their own worth or morals by someone else’s expectations–and I think Ms. Sciolino would agree that some of the strengths associated with the French concept of seduction are also significant weaknesses. But I would argue that simply by discussing and learning about French sensibilities doesn’t at all assume Americans are better or worse–just that we’re different. Which is part of the fun. Vive la différence!

I must be reading different articles than you are–and they are always about how we should stop being Americans and be more like they are: eat like them and not get fat, be more seductive, get laid more often, be better dressed, better flirts, more appealing at more mature ages, less vulgar, less prudish.

One can love France and french culture without the endless comparisons. Although I always did find nude/topless sunbathing to be passe. Do I need to be French to get cred for that?

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